


Bring Me a War

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Betrayal, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Redemption in Progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-08-02 04:33:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16298246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: ‘How do you know all that stuff about me?’ Finn asks.‘I looked at your personnel file,' says Ben. 'After Jakku. I was curious what kind of worthless moral flaw could make someone like you betray the First Order.’Kylo Ren gives into Han's pleas on Starkiller and comes home. But something is still badly wrong.





	Bring Me a War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spookykingdomstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/gifts).



‘Will you help me?’

The last light of a fading star hangs in the air. Another wave of cataclysm roils beneath Starkiller’s surface, primed and ready to unleash on D’Qar. Out on the bridge, shoulders squared and eyes blazing, Han Solo reaches out.

There’s a breathless moment where it seems that Kylo Ren grips his weapon tighter. Where his gloved hand clenches and his eyes go cold and a shadow passes over his face.

‘Ben.’ Han’s voice defies the darkness, warm and bright with the courage of a father who has only one thing left to lose. ‘Let’s go home.’

Kylo Ren lets go of the lightsaber.

The galaxy breathes out.

* * *

Clause 12.8.3(a)(i) of the Galactic Concordance mandates an impartial trial for Imperial fugitives who submit to the New Republic. Section 12.8.3(b-n) gives detailed standards for that trial, but most of them will be hard to meet now that the assault on Hosnian Prime has wiped out the whole galactic judiciary.

Clause 4.1(c)(xvi) of the Resistance charter sets a clean-slate policy for First Order defectors who willingly help the cause. This includes rehabilitative support, functional immunity from war crime prosecution, and a fast track to a cushy internal job that would make the average pipe room lackey sick with envy.

Clause 1.1(a)(i) of Finn’s basic common sense says that handing out a free pass to the First Order’s most notoriously brutal enforcer is a bad idea. But no one seems to want to cite Finn’s common sense in the flurry of argument that consumes the whole naval chain of command when it’s time to decide what happens to their new defector.

Kylo Ren earns his place at the table with some fleet-saving intel on the Order’s lightspeed tracking capabilities. There are tearful meetings with Han and Leia, warm overtures from old family friends, and vocal support from steely-eyed commanders who are keen to turn Snoke’s pet weapon against him.

Finn could tell them about the time he watched Kylo Ren hack off a helpless old man’s head on a whim. Or the time Kylo Ren secured the support of an Outer Rim governor by taking his two young children hostage. Or the time a hardened special forces unit came back from a mission with Kylo Ren wearing bloodstained armour and thousand-yard stares and refusing to talk about what they’d seen. But no one asks. Everyone has their own opinion on who Kylo Ren is and what he deserves.

What he deserves, they decide in the end, is a chance.

* * *

‘I’m just saying,’ says Poe, ‘I don’t like it.’ He’s tilted back in his chair with his boots up on the desk, and he doesn’t seem to mind that this argument has interrupted his review of the weekly patrol roster. ‘Immunity’s for guys like Finn that got caught up in the wrong crowd, not lost cause psychopaths like Kylo Ren.’

‘I don’t think he’s a lost cause,’ says Rey. There’s a lightsaber hilt tucked into her belt – a hotly contended possession, at the moment, and one of the very few cases to date where Kylo Ren hasn’t gotten his way. He said the legacy blade was his by birthright. Rey said it called to her in Maz Kanata’s castle. Leia said his parole forbade him from carrying a weapon, and also, it was high time for him to get over what she cryptically referred to as ‘his thing about Anakin’.

This went over well by the literal-death-and-destruction standards Finn was expecting, but very badly by any other metric.

Poe snorts. ‘He laughed while he tortured me, Rey. Making fun, cracking jokes, like the whole thing was some kind of game. I was screaming so loud I almost split my own eardrums and I still couldn’t drown out how much he was enjoying it.’

‘I didn’t say I like him,’ Rey says coolly. She’s never opened up about what happened when Kylo Ren tortured _her_ , but Finn knows enough about First Order interrogation practices that he doesn’t need a detailed run-through. ‘Ben Solo is one of the last Force users left in the galaxy, not to mention Snoke’s personal apprentice. He’s valuable. And he wants to do the right thing – I’ve sensed it in him.’

There’s been a lot of talk about sensing since Kylo Ren came on board. A lot of talk, and not a huge amount of evidence to back it up. ‘To be fair,’ Finn puts in, ‘he’s one of the last Force users because he killed all the other ones.’

‘Thank you,’ says Poe emphatically.

‘He could change the course of the war,’ says Rey.

‘He changed the course of half my organs. What can I say, I’m petty about that shit.’

Rey and Poe frown at each other, locked in a battle of wills that Finn is extremely reluctant to join. He isn’t on anyone’s side, exactly – he can see Rey’s point just as well as Poe’s, and at the end of the day, this isn’t his war. He’s just trying to survive. But Kylo Ren throws a wrench in that plan no matter which way it goes: if he turns out to still be evil he could kill them all, and if he turns out to be good, Snoke will never stop chasing them for as long as he’s on board.

Realistically, Finn’s best chance would be to let the argument run its course and slip away while everyone’s too occupied with Kylo Ren to notice. Rey is back safe with the Resistance, which is all he really wanted; Starkiller may be space dust, but even without Kylo Ren on side, the First Order is still too strong to even think of standing up to in any meaningful way. Finn could take a shuttle to the Outer Rim, away from the hot seat of the conflict. Get a job in a factory somewhere. Disappear.

But something keeps stopping him. ‘It doesn’t matter either way,’ is what he ends up saying, breaking the deadlock between his two friends. ‘General Leia's made up her mind.’

* * *

Kylo Ren sits in a corner booth of the empty canteen, sketching something on the screen of his datapad: a navigational chart, by the looks of it. ‘Batch eight,’ he announces without looking up. ‘From the Dantus sector.’

Finn has no good excuse for why he came down here. Curiosity, maybe. He’s always been a touch-the-hotplate kind of guy. Or maybe he just wanted to check things out for himself. Clear his head from all the clashing certainties being bandied around the base. He’s not sure what he expected when he crossed the threshold – ominous theme music? – but all he hears is a deep, calm voice and the faint hum of a generator in the background.

‘Old Brendol Hux’s recruiters did a tour of the mining outposts,’ Kylo Ren informs his datapad. ‘They’d all gone to shit after the civil war. The locals must have been desperate – they queued up in droves to swap their infant sons and daughters for a handful of credits and the promise of a better life.’

‘What are you on about?’ Finn snaps.

Kylo Ren looks up from his work. ‘I’m telling you your family history. Haven’t you ever wondered how you ended up a cog in the galaxy’s most powerful machine?’

‘You know,’ says Finn, swallowing the heart that rises like a buoy to his throat, ‘I actually don’t think about it all that much.’

It’s a lie. Finn has, in fact, thought a lot about how he ended up pushing mops on a warship under Phasma’s iron-fisted supervision. He’s just not sure he wants to hear Kylo Ren’s take on it.

He swallows his discomfort and makes for the caf machine by the wall, where he pours himself a plastifoam cup of steaming bitter liquid. ‘What are you doing down here, anyway?’ It’s a feeble attempt at conversation, but Kylo Ren doesn’t seem to need a lot of encouragement.

‘I’m plotting your gruesome downfall and the Order’s glorious ascension,’ he says, tracing a long arc on his screen. ‘You can tell Poe Dameron I’ve got it booked for next Taungsday.’

‘Oh, is that your version of a joke?’ Finn puts on what he hopes is a suitably contemptuous expression. ‘Poe mentioned you like a bit of comedy. I guess that explains the way you dress.’

It’s a juvenile attack and Finn knows it. But he’s not sorry – there’s something deeply, indescribably satisfying about insulting a man who only recently could have ended his career or his life with a word. Maybe this is the test. _If he doesn’t kill me under provocation, then he’s serious about no more murder._

‘You don’t need the bravado,’ says Kylo Ren, without so much as twitching. ‘You’re still afraid of me – I can see it in your mind.’

Finn bristles. ‘What do you mean, you can _see it in my mind_?’

‘You think very loud,’ says Kylo Ren, shrugging. ‘Most stormtroopers do. You’ve got absolutely no instinct for privacy.’

Caf sloshes over the side of Finn’s cup. It burns his hand, but he’s got bigger problems. ‘You can hear my thoughts?’ He demands. ‘Fuck, that’s so messed up. How many fingers am I thinking of holding up?’

Kylo Ren gives him a scornful look and goes back to his datapad.

‘How do you know all that other stuff about me?’ Finn presses what he opts, in the absence of an adjudicating party, to think of as his advantage. He takes a seat across the table but keeps his feet out from under the bench, ready to jump up at a moment’s notice. The canteen, like the rest of the base, has a run-down feel to it. Leia never planned to use it as more than a temporary holdout, but they don’t need to send scouts back to D’Qar to know what it looks like now Snoke’s forces have had a chance to do their thing.

‘I looked at your personnel file,’ says Kylo Ren. From this angle Finn can see the map he’s working on, but either he hasn’t made much progress yet or it’s a very empty part of space. The screen is almost blank except for a few hand-drawn lines that mark the rough shape of a sector boundary. ‘After Jakku. I was curious what kind of worthless moral flaw could make someone like you betray the First Order.’

Here’s something else Finn can see from up close: there are deep, dark shadows under Kylo Ren’s eyes. His skin has a clammy pallor to it, and the hair that looked glossy and well-coiffed when he first took off his helmet now hangs lank about his face. He’s shaved recently, but not carefully – there’s a little missed patch under his jaw, and a thin smattering of stubble around his mouth.

Huh. Not what Finn expected from Snoke’s tough-guy-in-chief.

‘Find what you were looking for?’ he asks, pulling his gaze up from Kylo Ren’s chapped, bitten lips to his tired eyes in their sunken sockets. Discomfort crawls inside him. He doesn’t want to feel sorry for Kylo Ren, or curious about him, or open to convincing. He knows damn well he’s looking at a venomous snake, poised to strike. But he came here anyway.

‘Still working on it,’ says Kylo Ren.

The weird thing is, up close, this snake doesn’t look particularly venomous. Kylo Ren has done terrible things, some of which Finn has personally witnessed. But right now he just looks sad. Lost. Vulnerable to the point of breakdown. _Ben_ , people are calling him, like he’s some regular dude they met in a cantina, like he’s never in his life ordered troops to open fire on a helpless crowd of unarmed villagers.

‘Why did you do it?’ Kylo Ren – Ben – asks. The question comes easily, like he’s been waiting to ask it. Like he’s the one who sought Finn out and not the other way around. ‘Your whole life was with the First Order, and no one was waiting for you on the other side. You had everything you needed. Your grades were perfect. Your superiors had you pegged as officer material. But you walked away from it all.’

‘I … I don’t know why,’ says Finn, caught off-guard by the earnest interest written on his face.

‘I think I know.' Ben leans forward across the table. ‘Do you want me to tell you?’

Finn swallows. Despite the caf, his mouth feels curiously dry. ‘Nice of you to ask this time,’ he says, ‘but no.’

The answer seems to disappoint Ben. He sits back in the booth, and lowers his gaze, already reaching for his datapad again. But he doesn’t push the issue.

‘What are you drawing, anyway?’ Finn asks, suddenly uncomfortably aware of the quietness in the room and the fact that it’s just the two of them.

‘It’s a sector of the Unknown Regions,’ says Ben. ‘An incredibly valuable mine that fuels more than half the fleet. No one outside high command knows it’s there, but it’ll cripple Snoke if we can take it offline. I just have to remember the route.’

The plastifoam dents easily under Finn’s fingers. He uses his thumbnail to imprint a crescent on the rim. ‘This isn’t a bluff, is it?’ he says, resenting the words even as they leave his mouth. He doesn't want to care. Doesn't want to give an inch to a man who's taken so many gory miles in his life. ‘You’re really going to help the Resistance now.’

‘Yeah,’ says Ben, and keeps drawing. ‘I really am.’ 

* * *

There’s something wrong with Ben Solo. Badly wrong. There's the most obvious issue, to start with: the freakish power that lets him control his physical surroundings and breach people’s minds like unguarded data vaults. But it's more than that. Ben seems to vibrate at an emotional frequency that’s only barely in range of Finn’s hearing. To listen to him speak, it’s like everything in the galaxy loops back around to one of his many personal crises. His relationship with his parents, past and present. His burning hatred of Luke Skywalker that no stern words about earned forgiveness seem able to douse. His redemption, his ambition, his bloodline, his destiny.

And Snoke. Oh, man, Ben’s obsession with Snoke. Everything that has ever gone wrong in the galaxy, from the destruction of Hosnian Prime down to the last spilt pitcher of milk, is Snoke’s personal fault that Ben alone can bring him to account for. While the Resistance scrambles for purchase in the wreckage of its parent democracy, Ben’s eyes are on the _Supremacy_ and the seat of Snoke’s power. Leia wants to find a new base and recover strength. Ben wants to march into the throne room and crush Snoke like the physical embodiment of all his own regrets and insecurities.

Because that’s what his crusade is about. It doesn’t take mind-reading powers to see through that particular bit of bravado, and the sudden interest in freedom and justice after years of caring for no one but himself. Sometimes, when Ben’s around, Finn can’t stop his eyes from drifting towards the nearest safety exit – it’s basic survival instinct. The man’s an overcharged reactor core, ready to melt down and take the whole ship with him.

But the longer Finn spends in his orbit, the harder it feels to get back out. Ben's a mess, sure, but he’s also a gravity well of charisma: dark and crushing and completely irresistible.

There are conversations. Late nights spent alone in the mess hall after everyone else has gone to sleep. Ben’s questions wade in gradually from the shallows of Finn’s psyche to the strongest currents: What was it like being part of a unit? Did he have friends in the FN corps? Enemies? Has he ever regretted leaving them behind? How frightened was he on the day he walked away?

There’s a flipside, Finn learns, to those obsessive navel-gazing tendencies: Ben listens. Patiently. Avidly. No one’s ever really asked Finn to talk about himself before. He talks about his old training buddies, Slip and Nines and Zeroes, and Ben drinks it in with a wistful softness in his gaze. He talks about the grinding banality of life in the barracks, and Ben rolls his eyes and smirks along at all the right moments. He talks about Phasma’s overbearing leadership, and Ben nods wisely and says, ‘She knew you had the strength to challenge her. She wanted to harness your abilities, but she was always afraid you’d slip the leash and turn on her.’

‘Yeah,’ says Finn, puffing out his chest. ‘Yeah, you bet your ass she was afraid.’

‘She was right to be.’ Ben doesn’t smile – he never smiles – but the cold, dark pits of his eyes seem to warm a little. ‘When the time comes, you’ll be the one to destroy her.’

‘Yeah, uh.’ Finn deflates a little, and his lips curl into an uneasy grin. It’s not that he’s never thought about hunting Phasma down and making her sorry. It’s just that the fantasy tends to fade to black right before the actual violence happens. ‘Hold up. When what time comes?’

Finn was wrong. Ben does smile sometimes – and when he does, it’s so much worse. ‘When we destroy Snoke’s corrupt reign once and for all,’ he says, with relish that sets Finn’s teeth on edge. ‘When the Resistance finally crushes the First Order and takes its rightful place at the head of the galaxy.’

‘I don't think that's really the plan,’ says Finn. He’s never been the sharpest political mind himself, but some of Ben’s ideas have an uncomfortably familiar ring to them, less like Leia’s balanced rhetoric and more like the angry fervour that used to fill Finn's days of training and float through his restless dreams at night. All this crushing and destroying and righteous power – it’s exactly what he came here to get away from.

But Ben no longer seems interested in listening. ‘One day,’ he says, eyes bright and moist, ‘this war is going to end, and those cowards and filth who chose the wrong side will go down in flames.’

Strong words from someone who only cut ties with the coward-and-filth crowd a matter of days ago. ‘Yeah,’ says Finn, and thinks wistfully of that factory job still waiting for him in the Outer Rim. ‘I guess they will.’

* * *

The hangar bustles with activity. The recon squad are back from their run on a secret Sienar-Jaemus production facility, all safe and in one piece – better than one piece, in fact, thanks to the large supply of TIE-line engine parts they’ve lugged back with them.

Poe looks happier than Finn’s ever seen him on solid ground. ‘We’re still not friends,’ he tells Ben very earnestly, prying the lid off a storage crate stamped with the First Order insignia. ‘But if you keep on bringing home the goods like this, I might upgrade you to civilised acquaintance.’

‘I don’t know what you’re going to do with it all,’ says Ben. Standing by the cargo ramp, dressed in reinforced black trousers and a black leather jacket, he looks the spitting image of an Order fighter pilot. His change in allegiance hasn’t yet flowed through to his wardrobe. ‘Those X-wings you’re flying won’t integrate with S-J tech – they’re not built for that kind of propulsion.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ says Poe. ‘Once we get all this unloaded, I’ll show you the booster pod I spliced into my engine. I took the converter coils straight from an old twin ion and they work fine.’

Despite his tough talk, Poe has thawed on Ben more than a little since the two of them discovered their shared love of experimental starfighter upgrades. The TIE silencer Ben used to fly was a front-line prototype with advanced stealth gear and next-gen collector arrays, whatever the fuck that means. This knowledge has worked unexpectedly well to soften Poe’s justifiable torture grudge.

When Poe does come around – which seems inevitable at this point, given how many secret First Order facilities there are still left to hit – Ben will have earned himself a clean sweep of the Resistance command chain. He’s not popular, exactly, but that’s never going to matter when he’s got a stable, high-ranked core of supporters all personally invested in his rehabilitation.

It’s a clever plan. Or it would be, if Finn had the slightest suspicion Ben was doing it deliberately. But he’s far too impulsive and moody for that kind of long-term networking strategy. Earlier this morning, while they were waiting for Poe’s fighters to get back, the whole duty rotation got to witness an explosive shouting match between Ben and Rey over the stupid Skywalker lightsaber. He’d win so many points just by letting the damn thing go already. The fact that he can’t do it says a lot.

Ben peers into the crate over Poe’s shoulder. It was him who provoked the fight with Rey, of course, but he seems to have forgotten it just as quickly. He and Poe are now talking excitedly about the crate’s contents: something something Torplex transpacitor shield deflection. Long streams of nonsense words, all excitable and deathly serious.

Finn notices the change in Ben’s mood like a whisper in his ear. He also notices leather stretched taut across his shoulders, and the dark hair just grazing his collar and hanging in silky tendrils around his neck and ears. It’s deeply confusing, and Finn's glad right now that Ben is too busy to turn around and look at him. Whatever this weird feeling is, it isn't one he's ready to meet eye to eye just yet.

* * *

‘They don’t trust me,’ Ben says bitterly, leaning back on his hands and dangling his legs over the side of Finn’s bunk. Finn didn’t invite Ben into his dorm room, and yet here he is anyway, messing up the covers and occupying more than his share of space.

‘Give it time,’ he says. It seems a little early in Ben’s parole to start complaining about conditions – he’s being treated remarkably well, Finn thinks, given what the Resistance knows about his history with the First Order. Especially since what they know amounts to barely a splatter of the full bloodsoaked amount.

Ben scowls at the ceiling. ‘I’m doing everything I can,’ he says, the strong hint of a whine creeping into his voice. ‘It’s thanks to my intel that we’re making any headway at all against Snoke. So why am I still a second-class citizen?’

 _Because you butchered half the other citizens_ , Finn only just manages to resist saying out loud. Thoughts like these are his proof that Ben’s mind-reading powers are far from perfect, or at least that they’re selective. Ben seems to expect indignation on his behalf, but Finn struggles to sympathise much with these recurring self-pity spirals. Today’s incident was triggered by an aloof vice admiral with purple-washed hair who insisted Ben leave Leia’s office before a highly sensitive briefing. He may yet survive the cruel humiliation, but for the last few hours it’s been touch and go.

‘My whole life,’ Ben rants on, ‘everyone’s seen me as a monster. I fought Snoke’s influence for years until they gave into fear and drove me away.’ It’s always _they_ when he’s in a mood like this. ‘Now I’m trying to make things right, but they’re all just waiting to watch me fall again.’

'Trust me,' says Finn with feeling, 'no one wants to watch you fall again. It's not much fun on the spectator side.'

'All I want it to make things right again. End the war once and for all, bring peace to the galaxy. How am I supposed to fight evil when I'm too busy fighting my own allies?'

'No one's asking you to fight evil,' says Finn. 'They're asking you to earn their trust, and that's going to take time. You can't force it.'

‘I could.’

‘Sure, you could. But it would kind of prove their point if you did.’

Given how the day’s been going, Finn half-expects to get his head bitten off for this piece of common sense. But Ben just looks deflated and says, ‘I know. Fuck. This is really hard.’ And just like that, he’s doing the thing with his sad eyes and his downturned mouth that makes it almost impossible for Finn to stay annoyed. ‘I don’t know how I’d handle this if I couldn’t talk to you. You’re the only one who gets it. You’re the only one who knows what it’s like to leave.’

‘Ben,’ says Finn. It’s stern and exasperated and wary and soft, all at once, and Ben looks at him like a life raft over fathomless waters. Finn can’t put a finger on when, exactly, Ben picked him as the person to rely on for emotional support and guidance. It’s happened so quickly. He’s so blatantly unqualified.

‘I mean it,’ says Ben. ‘I know I don’t always have it right yet. But you’re proof that it works. That there’s a place here, even for traitors like us.’

If Finn had mind-reading powers of his own, he’d love to know how Ben has come to fit the two of them inside the same box. In all the ways that matter most, their stories are completely different: Finn never killed for the Order, not once. He had no choice signing up and no help getting out. But Ben is only barely holding his head above water, and it feels callous to argue a point like that at a time like this. What matters – what should matter, surely – is that both of them are doing their best.

That’s what Finn tells himself when Ben puts his hand on the back of his neck and leans in – for a hug? No, of course not for a fucking hug. Finn’s heart beats faster and he holds very still. Doesn’t draw back or push Ben away. This is new and alarming and not remotely what he had planned for the evening. He’s not even sure if he likes Ben that much. A few moments ago, he was wondering how to politely kick him out of his dorm room.

But Ben has never met a mess he couldn’t make worse, and this _thing_ between them is nothing if not a mess.

Their lips meet. Ben’s breath catches, just the barest puff of air on Finn’s skin, and when he meets no resistance he sinks in with all his sullen black-clad weight and kisses like the secret to survival is hidden in Finn’s mouth.

He kisses, and Finn kisses back, and it’s too much and too soon and way too fucking recklessly stupid.

Finn yields to it anyway. If he’s honest with himself, he knew this would happen sooner or later. It’s not like they’ve been spending all this time together because Ben's so easy to get along with. It’s not like Finn keeps coming back because he’s just that good a person.

Their mouths are furnace-hot, pressed together, and Finn gives up on the argument and lets himself melt.

* * *

What they really need more than anything is time.

Time to let old wounds heal and new bonds solidify. Time for Finn to figure out what he’s doing here and why he hasn’t run yet. Time to get his head around the baffling, heart-pounding, still slightly disturbing fact that his bed now smells like Ben fucking Solo.

But that’s not how things work out. The First Order navy swarms the Core Worlds, turning freedom to dust beneath its jackboots, and there’s only so long the Resistance can do nothing and still keep its name. They have to do more than survive and defend. They have to fight back.

That’s what everyone keeps saying. Finn’s voice, like always, gets drowned out in the general racket of impassioned war rhetoric.

The route Ben was sketching that night in the canteen now looms large on a holoscreen over the command room. They don’t have resources for a drawn-out battle, so they’re pinning their hopes on a single, definitive blow that will shake loose Snoke’s chokehold on the galaxy. Mech droids are loading their whole stockpile of ordnance into the fighters. Captains are prepping their crews for Armageddon. Han and Chewie have risen above Ben’s mutinous protests to go and retrieve Luke Skywalker from exile.

That last part isn’t all Finn’s worried about, but it’s a factor.

Other factors include: there’ll be fighting, and killing, and a tangled map of boundaries it will be all too easy to step across. Old temptations will rise to the surface. There’s every possibility Snoke will show up. This morning, Ben woke up loose-limbed and bleary-eyed in Finn’s bed, curled up close with his eyes full of awe and needy adoration. Now he’s talking command through their target’s main weak spots, using words like ‘crush’ and ‘destroy’ and ‘annihilate’ with spittle-flecked zeal until Finn’s head aches just listening to him.

He doesn’t know the answers yet. He’s not an expert on any of this. He only knows what instinct tells him: that fighting gets more dangerous the more unknown variables enter the field. He knows that he isn’t leaving for the Outer Rim. And he knows that, despite all his frustration and the reservations he still has, he doesn’t want to see Ben blow it on the brink of victory.

He knows what he’s going to do, and he knows that if it works, there’s a very good chance Ben will never forgive him. He can live with that. He’s also hoping he won’t have to. The connection they've made is weird and ill-advised and unexpected, but … it’s not so bad. It could use more exploring. Hopefully they’ll still get that chance, once the debris has had some time to settle.

The meeting breaks up. ‘You go ahead,’ Finn tells Ben, who is practically shaking with excitement about his part in the upcoming battle. ‘I’ll meet you in the mess later. I just need a word with the general first.’

As the other attendees crowd towards the door, Finn moves against traffic to reach the front of the room. He’s trying hard not to overthink his approach. He has not yet, technically speaking, actually _joined_ the Resistance – he’s just kind of here, a fact he prefers not to draw too much attention to. But marching up to General Leia and laying down the law about her own son is the kind of move that’s guaranteed to attract some notice.

‘General,’ he greets.

Leia turns, backlit by the holoscreen still projecting their warpath around the room. ‘Finn,’ she says, and his nerves must be written all over him, because she smiles a gentle smile and clasps his shoulder. ‘I know this new mission is a lot to ask. You’ve done so much already for the Resistance, so I understand if you’ve decided not to–’

‘It’s not that,’ says Finn quickly. _Idiot_ , says the voice in the back of his mind that’s still mulling over that Outer Rim factory job. The door is almost closed, and in a few moments, he’ll have pushed it shut forever. He can’t tell Leia that both her First Order defectors need to sit this one out. Their whole plan relies on having someone along who’s familiar with the Star Destroyer systems. ‘I…’ There’s no point chewing on it. Might as well just spit and see where it lands. ‘Listen, I have some concerns about Ben.’

Leia’s expression doesn’t change. Her hair glows like a halo in the blue-green projector light, and her eyes are full of resigned acceptance. ‘You too, huh?’

* * *

They pull Ben off the mission. It turns out Finn hasn’t been the only one harbouring doubts about his fitness for active duty. The whole Resistance command more or less agrees: he’s valuable, and sincere in his desire to help, and currently so unstable that he's more a liability than a battlefield asset. In the end, Finn’s isn’t even the deciding vote. But that doesn’t stop him from feeling terrible. Or stop the fallout from landing on him.

‘Traitor,’ Ben snarls when Finn goes to check up on him in his dorm. He’s furious, but the emotion is thin, like lacquer on a porous surface. He looks like he was crying his eyes out right up to the moment Finn arrived. His eyelids are puffy and his cheeks are spotted danger-red.

In his own view, he’s the victim of a cruel conspiracy to undermine his redemption and punish him for past misdeeds. It’s Snoke’s fault, probably. Or his mother’s. Or Finn’s. Or maybe Luke Skywalker’s. They’re all in league somehow. Through the doorway, Finn can see shattered glass and the mangled chunks of what used to be perfectly good bedroom furniture.

He takes a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry, Ben. I want you to know that I–’

Ben slams the door in his face. From out in the corridor, Finn hears the sobs and crashes of a tantrum resuming.

But – and Finn can’t decide if this makes him feel better or worse about his decision – the sofa and the dresser mirror are as far as Ben’s rage goes. There are no arguments. No threats. No backslides into evil scheming. No one sees much of him while they’re preparing to fly out, and by that point Finn has other things to worry about, like how much spare ammo he has for his blaster, and whether his lightweight Resistance-issue armour will be enough to stop the impact of a targeted Order laser bolt. But in the back of his mind he can’t quite forget who isn’t there with him, psyching up his powers and telling anyone who’ll listen what he plans to do to Snoke when they catch him.

Dangerous or not, a bit of that manic energy would do wonders for Finn's morale right now.

It’s not until the engines are firing and the boarding ramps are down that Ben makes an appearance. His face is pale but calm: at some stage in his self-imposed quarantine he’s reached a kind of acceptance, or at least a temporary truce. He kisses his mother. Wishes Poe luck with his newly souped-up starfighter. Tells Rey something obscure about the Force that she seems to cautiously appreciate.

He stops in front of Finn, hands buried deep in the pockets of the very First Order-ish greatcoat he insists on keeping in wardrobe rotation. His eyes are lowered to the ground. ‘Try not to get killed,’ he says tersely.

‘You got it,’ says Finn. It’s not exactly _I forgive you_ , but it’s also not angry silence or another stream of recriminations. It's progress.

'It'll serve you right if you do.' That petulant tone of voice is becoming way too familiar. 'It's insanity to face Snoke's forces with anything less than your fullest arsenal.'

'It's insanity to face Snoke at all,' Finn points out, and Ben breaks his scowl for long enough to give a resentful shrug. They both know it's fair. 'Listen, Ben. If we don't make it back from this fight, whatever's left of the Resistance is going to be on you. We need someone here who can keep the cause alive.'

Ben rolls his eyes. 'That's not why you're leaving me behind.'

'No,' Finn admits. 'It's not. And I don't for one second think you're capable of running this place unsupervised, which is why I plan on making it back here when the fighting's over.'

'I can feel your fear, you know.'

'That makes two of us,' says Finn, swallowing hard around the lump in his throat.

There's no kiss. No embrace. No promise of love and loyalty. Finn allows himself one look back as he boards his shuttle, and Ben's image sears itself into his retinas - standing out there alone on the tarmac, grim-faced and silent, greatcoat flapping in the wind from the propulsion vents. It's entirely possible that this will be the last time they ever see each other. Ben certainly thinks so, or he wouldn't have swallowed his pride to come and see them off. 

Well. The world would be a pretty bleak place if he took most of Ben's opinions to heart. As the shuttle door descends, servomotors whirring, Finn manages a goodbye smile for Ben to cling to through whatever end this battle brings.


End file.
